BBC - History - World Wars: Nuremberg: Nazis On Trial Print this page The Nuremberg trial In November 1945, in the German city of Nuremberg, the victors of the World War Two began the first international war crimes trial. The choice of the city was significant for it was here that the National Socialist Party held its annual rallies. Adolf Hitler intended it to be rebuilt as the 'party city'. Now many of the leaders of the party were on trial for their lives, only a short distance from the grand arena where they had been fêted by the German people. The 21 defendants came from very different backgrounds. Some, like Hitler's chosen successor Hermann Goering, were senior politicians - their responsibility clear. Others were there because senior party leaders Heinrich Himmler, head of the feared SS, and Joseph Goebbels, head of propaganda - had killed themselves rather than face capture and trial.Their deputies or juniors stood on trial instead of them. But most of them were regarded by the western public, rightly or wrongly, as key playmakers in a system that had brought war to Europe and cost the lives of 50 million people.

This catalogue of sin was difficult for many of the defendants to come to terms with. The charges laid at their door were extraordinary. They were collectively accused of conspiring to wage war, and committing crimes against peace, crimes against humanity (including the newly defined crime of genocide) and war crimes in the ordinary sense (abuse and murder of prisoners, killing of civilians and so on). This catalogue of sin was difficult for many of the defendants to come to terms with. One of them, Robert Ley, best known for his role as head of the 'Strength through Joy' movement, which masterminded the Volkswagen car, hanged himself in his cell a few weeks before the trial started, so shamed was he by the accusations of crime. Ley's suicide was the most extreme example of the many ways the defendants responded to the trial. The reaction of the others covered a very wide spectrum, from confident defiance to full admission of responsibility. In the case of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former deputy, the reality was almost complete memory loss. Two prisoners in particular came to represent opposite poles in their reaction to the trials and the accusation of massive crimes.

Hermann Goering, the man Hitler chose as his successor in the 1930s and the most flamboyant and ambitious of the party hierarchy, prepared to defend Hitler and the Reich's war policy rather than admit that what had been done was criminal. On the other hand Albert Speer, the youthful architect who rose to run Germany's armaments effort during the war, accepted from the start the collective responsibility of the defendants for the crimes of which they were accused and tried to distance himself from Hitler's ghostly presence at the tribunal. Hermann Goering: 'Prisoner Number One' Hermann Goering at Nuremberg © Goering was captured shortly after the end of the war with large quantities of his looted artworks. He thought he could negotiate with the Allies as Germany's most senior politician, but he found himself under arrest, stripped of everything, and held in an improvised prison camp before his transfer to Nuremberg to stand trial. He was a big personality in every sense. The guards nicknamed him 'Fat Stuff' and bantered with him. He was charming, aloof and confident, and from the start was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.

Goering insisted that everything that they had done was the result of their German patriotism. To defy the court was to protect Germany's reputation and to maintain their loyalty to their dead leader. From the start Goering was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence. With the start of the trial, Goering assumed at once the informal role as leader and spokesman for the whole cohort of prisoners. He was given the most prominent position in the dock. When it came to his cross-examination he prepared carefully and in the opening exchanges with the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson he emerged an easy winner. So frustrated did Jackson become with Goering's clever, mocking but evasive responses that at the end of the session he threw down the headphones he had been wearing to hear the translated answers and refused to continue. 'If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did,' Goering boasted to the other prisoners, 'you will do all right.' Only after his cross-examination by the more experienced British barrister, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was Goering at last cut down to size. For the prosecution teams, Goering's domineering role among the prisoner body posed a problem.

In mid-February 1946, on the recommendation of the psychologist who monitored prisoner behaviour, Goering was forced to exercise and take his meals on his own. His isolation allowed the other prisoners to talk freely to each other and in the courtroom. The united front that Goering wanted soon collapsed. During the long summer months, when he had to listen to the catalogue of crimes and atrocities laid at the door of the system he had served, he became less confident. But he maintained his loyalty to Hitler until the very end, when he finally confessed to the prison psychologist his realisation that in the eyes of the German people Hitler had 'condemned himself'. Goering was found guilty on all the charges laid against him and condemned to death. He regarded the whole trial as simply a case of victors' justice and had not expected to escape with his life. At the very end he cheated his captors. On 14 October 1946, the night before he was to be executed, he committed suicide with a phial of cyanide either hidden in his cell or smuggled in by a sympathetic guard.

Albert Speer: The 'Decent Nazi' Albert Speer in his cell at Nuremberg © Speer was the opposite of Goering in almost every respect. Tall, conventionally good-looking, capable of a quiet charm, he impressed his captors and interrogators more than any of the other prisoners. For some time he had not expected to be one of the major war criminals. From the start he posed as an efficient and helpful technocrat, willing to give detailed information quite voluntarily on German weapons, economic performance and strategy. He was held separately from the other war criminals and was transferred to Nuremberg only in the autumn when it was clear that he was one of those chosen for trial. Despite the reservations of his defence lawyer, Speer decided that his best defence was to admit his share of collective responsibility for the crimes of the regime and to distance himself from Hitler, a man who Speer freely admitted had once held him in thrall like all the rest. At the same time in his interrogations and cross-examinations, he seldom expressed his individual guilt. He succeeded in presenting himself as part of the system, but not a driving force.

Just before the trial opened he sent a four-page letter to Robert Jackson reminding him again of just how useful he had been as a source of intelligence and technical information since his capture. He posed as an efficient and helpful technocrat, willing to give detailed information quite voluntarily. Speer was bound to clash with Goering. He resented Goering's efforts to dominate the prisoners and to dictate the course of their defence. When Goering was separated from the other prisoners in February, Speer was free to talk openly with them about the crimes of the regime. The others did not all share his candour, any more than they shared Goering's ebullience, but for the rest of the trial period the cohort of prisoners divided into small groups rather than presenting a united front. Speer added to the division when he dramatically revealed early in the trial that at the very end of the war he had tried to find a way to assassinate Hitler by pouring poison gas into his underground bunker. The plot was abortive, but it again presented Speer to the prosecution as someone different from the rest of the defendants. When Speer was cross-examined he got off more lightly than others.

At the end of the trial, even though he had been responsible for the mass exploitation of forced foreign labour, he was given a 20-year sentence. The man who supplied the labour, Fritz Sauckel, was executed. The Speer story has remained an enigma. No doubt he benefited from his pose as a technical manager (whose social background was not very different from those who were trying him) and from his willingness to confess responsibility. The extent to which he manipulated his story to win sympathy or genuinely believed that the regime he served was criminal is still open to conjecture. The Forgetful Rudolf Hess Rudolf Hess in Spandau prison © The most bizarre choice to stand trial was Hitler's deputy and head of the party chancellery, Rudolf Hess. There was no doubt that he had been a key figure in organising and running the party in the 1920s and early 1930s. He it was who took down the dictated draft of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'. But from the mid-1930s he became a more marginal political figure - 'one of the great cranks of the Third Reich', in the words of Speer.

In May 1941 - apparently anxious at his loss of favour with Hitler and pre-occupied with the dangers of the impending two-front war which would follow Germany's attack on the USSR scheduled for June - Hess took a plane and flew it to Scotland. Here he was captured by the British, interrogated and put in an institution. He became increasingly paranoid and eventually descended into long periods of self-induced hysterical amnesia. Hess spent his time in court reading, occasionally laughing and disregarding the process around him. It was in this state of almost complete forgetfulness that Hess was eventually flown to Nuremberg in October 1945 at the insistence of the Soviets, who had been puzzled and distrustful about what Hess had been doing in Britain for four years. It became clear that a decision had to be taken about whether he was fit to plead. A panel of medical and psychiatric experts was recruited and finally recommended on 29 November, more than a week after the trial had started, that Hess was fit to plead.

The following day, to the shock of the court, Hess suddenly stood up apparently lucid at last and announced: 'My memory is in order again.' Hess retained his lucidity for a few weeks, but with partial memory loss. He then relapsed into complete amnesia again and spent his time in court reading, occasionally laughing and disregarding the process around him. In a conventional criminal court he would have been deemed to be of unsound mind, but the Allies were worried about the effect it might have on the public perception of the trial if Hess were removed. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, though he pretended not to hear or understand the judgement. He committed suicide in Spandau prison, Berlin, in 1987. Goering, Speer and Hess represented extreme responses to the trial at Nuremberg, but they all shared with the others in the dock some degree of responsibility. In Goering's case a very great one for the programme of oppression, war and genocide on which Hitler's regime embarked from its inauguration in 1933. This did not make them criminals in the ordinary sense, and for many of the offences for which they were tried there was as yet no body of internationally agreed law.

They were indicted for the most part under retrospective law. But over the following years conventions on the laws of war, genocide and human rights were signed which embodied much of the 'law' made up at Nuremberg. Those legal instruments have not safeguarded innocent populations from violation over the last 60 years, but thanks to Nuremberg there is at least a proper understanding of what violation means, even if the international community still lacks an entirely effective means of punishing it. Nuremberg Diary by Gustave Gilbert (London, 1948) Hess: Flight for the Führer by Peter Padfield (London, 1991) Albert Speer: The End of a Myth by Matthias Schmidt (New York, 1982) Goering: The 'Iron Man' by Richard Overy (2nd ed London, 1998) Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny (London, 1995) The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials by Telford Taylor (London, 1993) Top About the author Richard Overy is professor of history at the University of Exeter.

His publications include Russia's War (1998) , The Battle (2000) and Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands (2001). For a lifetime's contribution to military history, Professor Overy was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize by the Society for Military History in 2001. BBC ON THIS DAY | 20 | 1945: Nuremberg trial of Nazis begins About This Site | Text Only 1945: Nuremberg trial of Nazis begins Twenty of Germany's Nazi leaders have gone on trial in the German city of Nuremberg charged with war crimes. The four judges who make up the International Military Tribunal took their seats at 1000 hours to hear the charges read out. The offences included waging a war of aggression, violating the customs of warfare and committing crimes against humanity. The three major wartime powers, the United States, Soviet Union and Britain will sit on the tribunal, and France has also been awarded a place.

The British president of the tribunal, Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, opened the trial, calling it "unique in the history of the jurisprudence of the world and of supreme importance to millions of people all over the globe. War crimes "For this reason there is laid upon everybody who takes any part in this trial the solemn responsibility to discharge his duties without fear or favour in accordance with the sacred principles of law and justice," he said. The accused include Hermann Goring, Commander of the Luftwaffe, Admiral Karl Donitz, who became German president following Hitler's death, Albert Speer, a close friend of Hitler's, and Martin Bormann, successor to Hess as Nazi Party Secretary, is being tried in his absence. They were seated in two rows in the dock, which has been specially adapted to contain all 20 of them. American military police in their trademark steel white helmets were seated behind and at either end of the dock. The whole day's sitting was then taken up with the simultaneous reading of the 24,000-word indictment in four different languages. Everyone in the court was issued with headphones to allow them to hear the charges being read in their native language, but the accused showed little interest.

They are represented by counsel and the prosecution has made available all its documents to allow a just defence. Talks about how to punish the Nazi leadership once the war ended began months ago. The British Government wanted to shoot the leaders once they were caught and formally identified - but the Soviet Union and US favoured a legal process. The International Military Tribunal was finally set up on 8 August by which time the main parties had agreed a compromise on a set of internationally recognised offences. They had also accepted Soviet insistence that only Axis aggression was covered by the new court - otherwise the Soviet authorities would have been in the dock as well for carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later. The defendants are expected to enter their pleas in the morning - most are expected to plead not guilty. In Context The case against the leaders of Nazi Germany opened the following morning with an address by the American chief prosecutor, Justice Jackson. His 20,000-word speech took up most of the day's sitting. <br> All 20 men pleaded not guilty. <br> The trial lasted until 1 October 1946 when 11 of the Nazi leaders were sentenced to death by hanging.

Martin Bormann was also sentenced to death in his absence. <br> Three of the defendants, including Hess, were given life sentences and the remaining four were sentenced to jail terms of between 10 and 20 years. <br> Verdicts of not guilty were recorded on three men, financial expert Hjalmar Schacht, Nazi politician and diplomat Franz von Papen and senior Nazi official Hans Fritzsche. The Soviet representative on the tribunal recorded his opposition to this decision and the verdict on Hess. <br> Hermann Goering committed suicide the day before his planned execution by swallowing a cyanide pill. On 16 October 1946 the ten remaining defendants were hanged. <br> A second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted at the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals and included the famous Doctors' Trial, which heard evidence against 23 German physicians who conducted experiments on concentration camp prisoners. <br> Altogether there were four more military tribunals in Nuremberg, the last one of which finished in April 1949.

<br> The Nuremberg trials - The Holocaust The Holocaust The Nuremberg trials Hermann Goering during his trial in 1946 The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals, convened in the months after World War II to dispense justice to war criminals. The trials were designed to prosecute and bring to justice the most prominent political, economic and military leaders of the Nazi party. The Nuremberg trials were held between November 1945 and October 1948. Since there were hundreds of Nazi defendants, the Allies decided to prosecute them in ‘groupings’ rather than individually (a process that may have taken many years). The separate trials in 1948, for example, considered the fate of Nazi civilian ministers, Einsatzgruppen officers and soldiers, and directors of the gigantic industrial company Krupp. This article, however, is primarily concerned with the first and best-known of the Nuremberg hearings: the ‘trial of major war criminals’. This trial was heard before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) between November 20th 1945 and October 1st 1946.

The defendants were 24 senior Nazi officials, including Herman Goering, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher, Albert Speer and military commanders Alfred Jodl and Karl Donitz. The IMT itself was comprised of judges from the four major Allied powers: Britain, France, United States and the Soviet Union. The city of Nuremberg was chosen to host the trial for three reasons. It had not suffered as much extensive damage as the capital, Berlin. Also, Nuremberg housed the largest courthouse still standing in Germany, known as the Palace of Justice, and its attached prison was large enough to house all 24 defendants. The Allies also identified a certain symmetry in bringing leading Nazis to justice in a city that had been the ceremonial heartland of Nazism. Recently uncovered evidence suggests that Allied discussions on bringing enemy leaders and war criminals to justice had taken place almost two years before the war had ended. US president Franklin Roosevelt, and later president Harry Truman, favoured a conservative, judicially-sanctioned punishment, after due process and a fair trial. The leaders of European nations, who had been more directly affected by Nazi aggression and occupation, took a stronger line.

The Soviets, and at times the British, favoured retribution against Nazi leaders and soldiers – even mass execution in some cases. But the Americans’ significant political muscle won out, leading to the formation of a military tribunal. The legal basis for the trials was established by the London Charter, issued on August 8th 1945. This charter proclaimed that persons of Axis nations could be prosecuted for breaches of international law and the laws of war. Allied personnel would not be tried for war crimes in Nuremberg. The IMT was to comprise one judge from each of the four Allied nations. The prosecution team was also to contain one chief prosecutor from the same nations. Legal representation for Nazi defendants was provided mostly by German lawyers. At the opening of the trial, the 24 defendants were charged with one or more of the following four charges: Charge One: Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace. Charge Two: Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace. Charge Three: War crimes. Charge Four: Crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg trials employed legal procedures that were common in Western legal systems and courtrooms.

The London Charter also provided the trials with their own rules of evidence. Among the evidence considered and accepted by the IMT were eyewitness testimonies, film and photographic material, government documents, and the findings of earlier military tribunals and investigations. The hearings were conducted in four ‘official’ languages (English, French, German and Russian) so to facilitate a smooth trial without constant interruptions, the IMT organised a new system of simultaneous translation. Interpreters were placed in sound-proof booths and translated trial proceedings in real time. Judges, legal counsel and defendants were each outfitted with equipment, supplied by IBM; they could don headphones and switch between any of the four languages. “Many historians have concluded that the Nuremberg trials did not present an authoritative historical account of the Holocaust, and may even have distorted the record for future generations. Instead of an explanation built on German nationalism and anti-Semitism, the court identified war and “renegade militarism” as the primary motivating factors for the anti-Jewish policies of Nazi Germany. Justice Robert H. Jackson considered the extermination of the Jews not a principal Nazi objective in and of itself, but a function of other war aims of the German High Command.

Douglas asserts that because the prosecution treated crimes against humanity as secondary to crimes against peace, it implicitly accepted the Nazi portrayal of Jews as potential fifth-columnists and saboteurs, who had to be eliminated…” Richard Wilson, historian Of the 24 men placed on trial, 18 were found guilty of one or more charges and four were acquitted. Martin Bormann could not be located and was tried in absentia, while labour boss Robert Ley committed suicide before the trial began. Some of the notable verdicts included: Herman Goering. Goering was Hitler’s second in command. Amongst other duties he oversaw Germany’s rearmament program and commanded the Luftwaffe (air force). Guilty on four charges, sentenced to death. Rudolf Hess. Hess was a faithful ally to Hitler and head of the Nazi Chancellery. He flew to England in 1941. Guilty on two charges, sentenced to life imprisonment. Albert Speer. Speer was the leading Nazi architect and Hitler’s manager of war production. Guilty on two charges, sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. Julius Streicher.

The founding editor of Der Sturmer, Streicher was a vocal and embittered anti-Semite. Guilty on one charge, sentenced to death. Joachim von Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop was Hitler’s foreign minister and an important signatory to Nazi treaties. Guilty on four charges, sentenced to death. Martin Bormann. Bormann was Hitler’s private secretary and replaced Hess as controller of his inner circle. Guilty on two charges, sentenced to death in absentia. Wilhelm Keitel. Commander of the Wehrmacht (army). Guilty on four charges, sentenced to death. Karl Donitz. Head of the German navy. Guilty on two charges, sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. The 12 men sentenced to death – except for the missing Bormann and Goering, who had suicided the night before – were executed on October 16th 1946. Although firing squads are usually employed for military executions, the IMT chose hanging for the Nuremberg convicts, believing it more appropriate for their criminal conduct.

Two American soldiers were selected to carry out the hangings, which took place in the gymnasium of the Nuremberg prison. Many of the hangings were carried out with short rope, that caused prisoners to die a long, lingering death from suffocation, rather than an instantaneous death from a broken neck. Afterwards, their bodies were shipped to Munich and incinerated at Dachau, the site of many Nazi atrocities. The ashes were scattered over the River Isar. The seven Nazis given prison sentences were shipped to Spandau Prison in Berlin. This prison was run by the British, French, Americans and Russians in alternating three-month shifts, for the next 40 years. By 1966 there was only one remaining prisoner: Rudolf Hess. He was Spandau’s only inmate for 21 years, until his death in 1987, aged 91. Spandau was immediately bulldozed after Hess’ death, to prevent it becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis. The site is now occupied by an ALDI store. 1. The Allies were considering what to do with Nazi leader and war criminals post-war, as early as 1943. 2.

They established war crimes tribunals in Nuremberg, the ceremonial home of the Nazi Party. 3. Trial procedures were set down in the London Charter, with the four Allied nations taking a lead role. 4. The tribunals utilised procedures from Western legal systems and heard a range of evidence. 5. In the main trial, 24 leading Nazis were tried, 18 found guilty and 12 sentenced to death. Brief Overview of Defendants & Verdicts at Nuremberg Trials | Jewish Virtual Library Tweet On October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal handed down its verdicts in the trials of 22 Nazi leaders - eleven were given the death penalty, three were acquitted, three were given life imprisonment and four were given imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years. A brief sketch of the principal defendants in the Nuremberg Trials , their connection to the Holocaust and the sentence each received: Martin Bormann Bormann was with Hitler and Goebbels in Hitlers subterranean bunker on April 30, 1945.

Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide while Bormann and others fled the bunker in an attempt to escape the rapidly advancing Soviet army. While he was presumed dead or captured, his whereabouts were unconfirmed at the time of the trials in Nuremberg. Bormann replaced Hess as Hitlers Deputy in charge of Party affairs after Hess was asked to resign following his unofficial flight to England to persuade England to negotiate peace with Hitler. Bormanns reputation among members of his own Party and, especially, the German army was very negative. He was seen as uncivilized, ruthless and brutal. In his absence from the trial, the Bormann investigation proceeded on the basis of voluminous documentary evidence linking him to the expulsion of millions of Jews to Poland, the utilization of Ukrainian women as slave labor. Martin Bormann was sentenced in absentia to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Bormann: CLICK HERE Karl Doenitz: After Hitlers rejection of the Versailles Treaty in 1935, Karl Doenitz was made commander of the submarine unit of the German navy (Germany was forbidden submarines by the treaty). By 1940 he had risen to the rank of Vice Admiral.

He was indicted under Counts One, Two and Three of the Indictment and mainly for that section of the Indictment dealing with War Crimes on the seas, particularly in connection with the charges that German U-Boats had sunk British merchant ships. His main defense consisted of counter charges that the U.S. had also sunk Japanese merchant vessels. This was not, primarily, a "you are another" defense. Rather, his defense counsel argued for acquittal on the grounds that the German Navy and the U.S. Navy had committed identical military actions and with the same justification -- that Japanese and British merchant vessels were part of the military effort of those nations. There was no strong evidence that Doenitz had attended planning sessions of the German War Department and only minimal evidence that he had been involved in the extermination or enslavement of civilian populations. His guilt was mainly in the area of "War Crimes." Karl Doenitz was given 10 years imprisonment at Spandau Prison. Full Judgement against Doenitz: CLICK HERE Hans Frank: Hans Frank joined the Nazi Party in 1927 and was appointed Minister and Reich Commissioner for Justice in 1933.

He served as Governor of the Generalgouvernment of Poland from 1939 to the end of the war. Under his administration the approximately 2.5 million Jews in the occupied territories of Poland were exploited in slave labor. Also during his administration, the extermination camps in eastern Poland were constructed implemented. In the initial stages of his testimony, Frank denied knowing anything about Auschwitz or Maidanek, even though Auschwitz was only 30 miles from Cracow, the seat of his administrative offices. However, when the thirty-six volumes of his journal were brought into the courtroom on October 8, Franks testimony shifted from denial of knowledge to denial of responsibility and finally to open condemnation of Hitler, acceptance of guilt and pleas for mercy. His confession, however, according to Telford Taylor, was a civic confession rather than an individual one. Hans Frank was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Frank: CLICK HERE Wilhelm Frick: Frick became a Nazi as early as 1923 served as the Nazi Minister of the Interior until from 1933 to 1943.

He played a significant role in the formation of Nazi racial laws and antisemitic legislation, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and 1938. He was also instrumental, along with Goering in the Aryanization of Jewish assets following Kristallnacht. Wilhelm Frick was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Frick: CLICK HERE Hans Fritzsche: It was probably Goebbels who, more than and of the witnesses or documents called in on Fritzsches account that saved him from being convicted. As a radio broadcaster he had indeed disseminated information and propaganda that was extremely important to the Nazi organization; however, it could never be demonstrated that he was the originator of the materials. The media was under such tight control of Goebbels Ministry of Propaganda that the only source of information available to journalists and broadcasters was the information provided them by Goebbels office. His antisemitism seems to have been an ideology of assent rather than one which he pressed upon the German population. Hans Fritzsche was acquitted.

Full Judgement against Fritzsche: CLICK HERE Walter Funk: As a close friend of President Hindenberg, Walter Funk was accustomed to high-level political and administrative interactions. When Hitler came to power, Funk was appointed to the position of Press Chief of Hitlers government. Shortly after his appointment, Goebbels formed the Ministry of Propaganda and Funks office was subordinated to Goebbels. Later he was appointed to replace Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics. That office, too, came under the control of Goebbels. Some months later, he was appointed by Hitler as President of the Reichsbank. The bank was assigned the role of economic planning for the war effort. Funk also attended the high-level meeting following the events of Kristallnacht. It was at this meeting that the decision was made to hold the Jews responsible for the destruction visited upon them by roving Nazi gangs. Under Heydrichs and Goebbels leadership, it was also decided at that Jews would be excluded from the German economy  a distinct first step in the direction of the Holocaust.

One tense moment in the trial occurred when documentary evidence was presented by the prosecutors staff that the Reichsbank received and held a large deposit from the SS. The deposit consisted of bags of jewelry and other valuables, including dental gold, taken from Jewish victims in eastern Europe. Funk consistently denied knowledge of the contents of those bags and the prosecutors could never show conclusively that he did have such knowledge. Now could they demonstrate conclusively that he was instrumental in planning military operations, or that he was directly involved in crimes against humanity. Walter Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released from Spandau Prison in 1957 and died in 1960. Full Judgement against Funk: CLICK HERE Hermann Goering: Goering was perhaps the most influential person, next to Hitler , in the Nazi organization . He was one of only 12 Nazis elected to the Reichstag in 1928. He orchestrated the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933 and, with Goebbels assistance, used the fire as a propaganda tool against the communists.

In the mid-1930's Goering was in charge of the Aryanization of Jewish property, a policy which extended to Jews throughout Europe following the Anschluss. After the events of Kristallnacht , November 8 and 9, 1938, Goering (under instructions from Hitler) called a high-level meeting of the party, on November 12, to assess the damage done during the night and place responsibility for it. Present at the meeting were Goering, Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich , Walter Funk and other ranking Nazi officials. The intent of this meeting was two-fold: to make the Jews responsible for Kristallnacht and to use the events of the preceding days as a rationale for promulgating a series of antisemitic laws which would, in effect, remove Jews from the German economy. An interpretive transcript of this meeting is provided by Robert Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, New York: Harper and Row, 1983:164-172): Gentlemen! Today's meeting is of a decisive nature, Goering announced.

I have received a letter written on the Fuehrers orders requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another. Kristallnacht turns out to be a crucial turning point in German policy regarding the Jews and may be considered as the actual beginning of what is now called the Holocaust . Following that meeting, a wide-ranging set of antisemitic laws were passed which had the clear intent, in Goerings words, of "Aryanizing" the German economy. The path to the "Final Solution" had been chosen. Hermann Goering was sentenced to death by hanging. He evade the sentence by committing suicide in his cell. Full Judgement against Goering: CLICK HERE Rudolph Hess: Hess is not to be confused with Rudolph Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz who was tried in Warsaw in 1947 and executed at Auschwitz. Hess served as Hitlers deputy minister and was next in line if Goering should be unavailable for any reason.

According to Telford Taylor (The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, 1992:25), Churchill made statements at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, which indicate that he did not consider Hess to be a "major war criminal" and should be given a "judicial trial." Apparently, Churchill was not fully aware of Hess involvement in Nazi atrocities. Vera Laska, ed., Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust: The Voices of Eyewitnesses. Westport & London: Greenwood Press, 1983 tells us: These preparatory schools for murder [euthanasia centers, BSA] offered the training course for the roughnecks who learned by killing thousands of Christian German and Austrian individual victims and, thus insensitized, graduated to the main task, which was to be the genocide of millions of Jews, and eventually of Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Czechs and other less worthy Slavs. The program was administered under Rudolf Hess and, after his departure, under Martin Bormann.

Medical supervision was under Werner Heyde, M.D., professor at the University of Wurzburg; 100,000 people were dispatched this way. They experimented with various gasses and injections; they photographed the effect, clocked the speed of death by a stopwatch, filmed it in slow motion and then dissected the brain -- all as an undergraduate course preparatory for genocide. Rudolf Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment. He served over 40 years of that sentence at Spandau Prison and committed suicide in 1987 at age 93. Full Judgement against Hess: CLICK HERE Alfred Jodl: Alfred Jodl was Chief of the Operations Section of the Wehrmacht [the regular German Army], under the direction of Blomberg and Keitel. In that capacity, he was involved in the destruction of Czechoslovakia. During his trial, Jodl asserted that it was the Czechs who initiated it by massing troops on the German border, knowing full well that plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia were in place at least six months prior to the invasion.

He characterized the invasion of the Soviet Union as a "preventive measure" since Soviet troops were concentrated along the German border. In regard to "crimes against humanity," Jodl was strongly implicated in promoting forced labor -- particularly against the civilian populations of Denmark, Holland, France and Belgium. His primary defense was the "higher authority" plea. At the end of the cross-examination, Jodl stated, "It is not the task of a soldier to be the judge of his Commander in Chief. May history or the Almighty do that." (quoted in Taylor, 1992:439). Alfred Jodl was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Jodl: CLICK HERE Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Ernst Kaltenbrunner, went on trial at Nuremberg on April 11, 1946. He replaced Reinhard Heydrich who was assassinated by Czech agents in May, 1943 and assumed control over the SD and the Gestapo. Like most other security positions, Kaltenbrunner came under the direct authority of Heinrich Himmler.

His position placed him in direct contact with the Einsatzgruppen . SS officer, Otto Ohlenberg, appearing as a witness at the trials Under questioning by Col. Amen, Ohlendorf offers the following testimony: COL. AMEN: What were the positions of Kaltenbrunner, Mueller, and Eichmann in the RSHA, and state for what periods of time each of them continued to serve in his respective capacity? OHLENDORF: Kaltenbrunner was Chief of the Sicherheitspolizei and the SD; as such, he was also Chief of the RSHA, the internal organizational term for the office of the chief of the Sicherheitspolizei and the SD. Kaltenbrunner occupied this position from 1/30/1943 until the end of the war. Mueller was Chief of Amt IV, the Gestapo. When the Gestapo was established, he became Deputy Chief, and as such he logically became Chief of Amt IV of the RSHA. He occupied this position until the end of the war. Eichmann occupied a position in Amt IV under Mueller and worked on the Jewish problem from approximately 1940 onwards.

To my knowledge, he also occupied this position until the end of the war. Regarding Kaltenbrunners involvement with the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units), Ohlendorf testified: COL. AMEN: In what respects, if any, were the official duties of the Einsatz groups concerned with Jews and Communist commissars? OHLENDORF: On the question of Jews and Communists, the Einsatzgruppen and the commanders of the Einsatzkommandos were orally instructed before their mission. COL. AMEN: What were their instructions with respect to the Jews and the Communist functionaries? OHLENDORF: The instructions were that in the Russian operational areas of the Einsatzgruppen the Jews, as well as the Soviet political commissars, were to be liquidated. COL. AMEN: And when you say "liquidated" do you mean "killed?" Then, a few questions later: COL. AMEN: Do you know whether the mission and the agreement were also known to Kaltenbrunner? OHLENDORF: After his assumption of office Kaltenbrunner had to deal with these questions and consequently must have known details of the Einsatzgruppen which were offices of his.

Under further questioning and cross-examination, Col. Amen presented documentary and witness evidence linking Kaltenbrunner to Mauthausen, the crematoria and the extermination of Jews (cf. Taylor, 1992:361). Ernst Kaltenbrunner was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Kaltenbrunner: CLICK HERE Wilhelm Keitel: Whereas some of the defendants were relatively [difficult] cases for the tribunal because of their minimal involvement, Keitel was relatively easy because of his extensive involvement in the Nazi organization. He served as Hitlers military Chief of Staff and, consequently, was directly involved in the planning of the war at the highest level. His direct involvement in the "terror fliers" policy, which resulted in the wanton downing of British and American planes and the summary execution of the fliers and the "Night and Fog" decrees of 1941 which resulted, over the next three years, in the summary execution without court martial or trial, of military prisoners-of-war, were extremely damaging to his defense. Even while admitting his complicity in "war crimes," Keitel declared his loyalty, as a soldier, to his commander-in- chief.

Wilhelm Keitel was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Keitel: CLICK HERE Erich Raeder: Like Doenitz, Erich Raeder was a German naval commander and, as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, he was Doenitz superior officer. He, like Doenitz, was charged under Counts One, Two and Three of the Indictment. Also, as in the case of Doenitz, the most serious charges came in connection with German U-Boat activity. Unlike Doenitz, however, strong evidence was presented to sho that Raeder was also involved in the "general plan and conspiracy" to wage aggressive war in violation international law and existing treaties. Erich Raeder was given life imprisonment. Because of failing health, he was released from Spandau Prison in 1955 and died in 1960. Full Judgement against Raeder: CLICK HERE Alfred Rosenberg: Rosenberg was a Baltic German who had migrated to Germany in 1918 and became a member of the Nazi Party in 1919. He was Hitlers chief racial ideologist.

Throughout his career, he was obsessed with the idea that the Russian Revolution was, in large part, the work of an "international Jewish conspiracy." Early in his Nazi career he served as editor of the Nazi Newspaper, Peoples Observer. He was not well-liked be other members of the party, but he had Hitlers favor. In 1930 he was elected to the Reichstag and, after holding several minor offices in Hitlers organization, he was appointed as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories during the way and worked for a German- subjugated Russia, free of Jews and colonized by people of Aryan blood. He admitted knowledge of the Einsatzgruppens extermination of Jews and he admitted participating in the forced labor programs involving of subjugated people in the eastern Occupied Territories. Alfred Rosenberg was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Rosenberg: CLICK HERE Fritz Sauckel: As Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of labor, it was Sauckels responsibility to provide laborers for the industrial component of the German war economy. With so many of Germanys able-bodied men in uniform, it became increasingly difficult to secure laborers.

Under Saukels leadership nearly 5 million laborers were imported involuntarily from France and other foreigners in German occupied territories -- principally from eastern Europe and the Slavic states. He was charged with the solicitation of slave labor -- in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1930. Sauckel was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Sauckel: CLICK HERE Hjalmar Schacht: Why Hjalmar Schacht was included in the list of defendants is unclear. In fact, the only charges brought against him were: contributing to Hitlers, and the Nazi Partys rise to power and promoting preparations for war. His dislike of the Versailles Treaty, his belief that the German military should once again be strong and his support of the Anschluss were well known, but these are hardly "war crimes." He was never in a position to exercise significant influence in any of the planning and preparation for war. Likewise, Schacht had never concealed his antisemitism and his agreement that Jews should be excluded from governmental and civil service positions Hjalmar Schacht was acquitted.

Full Judgement against Schacht: CLICK HERE Artur Seyss-Inquart: In March, 1938, under Hitlers urging, Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian Chancellor, appointed Artur Seyss-Inquart as Austrian Minister of the Interior of Public Safety. When Schuschnigg resigned a month later, Hitler appointed Seyss-Inquart Chancellor. Immediately, the new Chancellor invited German troops to enter Austria. The Anschluss was under way. In October, 1939 he was appointed Deputy Governor-General in Poland under Hans Frank. In that position he was instrumental in the formation of the Lublin Plan for the deportation of Jews from the Reich (cf. Jozeph Michman, ""Artur Seyss-Inquart," in Israel Gutman, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: Vol. 4, 1990:1346ff) In May, 1940, Hitler appointed him Reich Commissioner of the Occupied Netherlands to pave the way for the annexation of that country.

In late 1940 and 1941, Seyss-Inquart was active in the Aryanization of Jewish property and the deportation of Dutch Jews to the extermination camps in Poland. His knowledge of Hitlers intentions, both militarily and with regard to the Jews was extensive and intimate. Artur Seyss-Inquart was charged on all four counts and was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Seyss-Inquart: CLICK HERE Albert Speer: The following section of Justice Jacksons cross-examination of Speer clarifies his involvement in the Nazi movement: JUSTICE JACKSON: You have stated a good many of the matters for which you were not responsible, and I want to make clear just what your sphere of responsibility was. You were not only a member of the Nazi Party after 1932, but you held high rank in the Party, did you not? SPEER: Correct. MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And what was the position which you held in the Party? SPEER: I have already mentioned that during my pre-trial interrogations.

Temporarily in 1934 I became a department head in the German Labor Front and dealt with the improvement of labor conditions in German factories. Then I was in charge of public works on the staff of Hess. I gave up both these activities in 1941. Notes of the conference I had with Hitler about this are available. After 2/8/1942 I automatically became Todts successor in the central office for technical matters in the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP. MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And what was your official title? SPEER: Party titles had just been introduced, and they were so complicated that I cannot tell you at the moment what they were. But the work I did there was that of a department chief in the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP. My title was Hauptdienstleiter or something of the kind. MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: In the 1943 directory it would appear that you were head of the "Hauptamt fur Technik." MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And your rank appears to be "Oberbefehlsleiter"? SPEER: Yes, that is quite possible. MR.

JUSTICE JACKSON: Which as I understand corresponds 1 roughly to a lieutenant general in the army? SPEER: Well, compared to the other tasks I had it was very little. MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And you attended Party functions from time to time and were informed in a general way as to the Party program, were you not? SPEER: Before 1942 I joined in the various Party rallies here in Nuremberg because I had to take part in them as an architect, and of course besides this I was generally present at official Party meetings or Reichstag sessions. MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And you heard discussed, and were generally familiar with, the program of the Nazi Party in its broad outlines, were you not? SPEER: Of course. Albert Speer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released from Spandau Prison on September 30, 1966. Speer died in 1981.

Full Judgement against Speer: CLICK HERE Julius Streicher: As Editor-in-Chief of the venomous antisemitic paper, Der Stuermer, Julius Streicher disseminated hatred and the most virulent strain of anti-Jewish sentiment to be found in all of Germany. And Hitler strongly approved of Streichers publication. The only real trouble he ever got into with the Nazi Party was for raising questions about Goerings sexual prowess. When Goerings wife, Emma, was about to give birth, Streicher suggested that perhaps Emma had been artificially inseminated (Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, 1983:383). Daniel Goldhagen (Hitlers Willing Executioners, 1996:102) describes him as "the most rabid antisemite in Germany." Jackson called him "the venomous vulgarian." However, Streicher was non-military, he was not part of the planning process of the Holocaust, nor of the invasion of Poland or the Soviet Union. And, yet, his role in inciting the extermination of Jews was significant enough, in the judgment of the prosecutors, to include him in the indictment.

Julius Streicher was sentenced to death by hanging. Full Judgement against Streicher: CLICK HERE Constantin von Neurath: The sentence of Neurath has been criticized as relatively harsh. His case was little different from that of Papen and Schacht, both of whom were acquitted. The most serious charges against him were relative to his position and actions with regard to the recolonization of Czechoslovakia by Germans in keeping with Hitlers lebensraum ideology. The Tribunal seemed unimpressed with his claim that he remained in his position in Czechoslovakia to prevent that country from being taken over completely by the SS (cf. Conot, 1983:450). On the other hand, the Tribunal was convinced that Neurath knowledge of Hitlers plans for aggressive war was to extensive to warrant acquittal. Constantin von Neurath was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Because of failing health, he was released from Spandau Prison in 1954 and died in 1956.

Outline of von Neurath's Crimes: CLICK HERE Full Judgement against von Neurath: CLICK HERE Franz von Papen: In 1932, President Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as Reich Chancellor. With Hitlers rise to power, Papen became Vice Chancellor and later served as Ambassador in Vienna. The Tribunal charged him with using his positions to promote the rise and extension of the Nazis power in Europe. However, the prosecution had serious difficulties linking Papen to conspiracy to initiate an aggressive war. Franz von Papen was acquitted. Outline of von Papen's Crimes: CLICK HERE Full Judgement against von Papen: CLICK HERE Joachim von Ribbentrop: In 1938, Constantin von Ribbentrop was appointed as Hitlers Foreign Minister, replacing Neurath. In that position, he was intimately involved in almost all of the actions to wage "aggressive war." His record in the area of "crimes against humanity" was extremely damning. He had recommended and supported the deportation of Jews from France and Italy to the camps in the east and urged their extermination.

Under cross-examination by the British assistant prosecutor, Ribbentrop admitted that he knew of Hitlers intention to deport all Jews from German territories and that he assisted in that process (cf. Conot, 1983:353). Joachim von Ribbentrop was sentenced to death by hanging. Outline of von Ribbentrop's Crimes: CLICK HERE Full Judgement against von Ribbentrop: CLICK HERE Baldur von Schirach: Shirach was charged on Count One and Count Four of the Indictment. On Count One, planning and preparing for aggressive war, the evidence was slight at best. As head of the Hitler Youth movement, he was accused of preparing the youth of Germany for war. While there is little question of his effectiveness in consolidating all the German youth groups under the Hitler Jungend, Shirachs counsel was successful in separating the Youth Movement from the German Wehrmacht. On Count Four however, Schirach was is much deeper trouble. His antisemitism was not only well-known, Schirach had expressed it openly. Interestingly enough, Shirachs antisemitism was drawn primarily from Henry Fords The International Jew rather than from Rosenberg and Streicher.

Thr Tribunal produced powerful documentary evidence that he knew and approved the deportation of Jews from Vienna to the extermination camps. He also knew of the Einsatzgruppens mobile van extermination of Jews in eastern Poland. This knowledge rendered invalid his claim that he supported the deportation of Reich Jews following Kristallnacht because he thought it was in the best interest of Jews. Baldur von Schirach was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He served the entire term in Spandau Prison and died in 1974. Outline of von Schirach's Crimes: CLICK HERE Full Judgement against von Schirach: CLICK HERE

Question: Who was the only one of the Nazis to plead guilty at the Nuremberg trials
Answer: Albert Speer